Awakening
Light peaked inside the escape pod. It shone on Veinassa's eyes, which would have probably blinded her if she didn't have her eyes closed so tight. She pressed her fingers against the cracked glass. She slammed her fist, her eyes flashing open and fluttering wildly. She grimaced as she slammed the glass again. Shit. she thought. The locking mechanism must have broken. She kicked and screamed. Her jumpsuit was fucking torn. She was missing a left sleeve and a right pant leg. She needed to get out. She didn't even know where she was. It was raining; that much she could tell as the rain pounded the thick glass. It was a soft tempered sound against the glass, which was meant to not only protect one from the vacuum of space, but also against a variety of artillery. It was more than bullet-proof; a laser blast would merely shave some of the layering of the damned thing. Veinassa slammed her elbow against what was basically the low ceiling. It felt like a nightmare, a dream gone awry, but it wasn't- she could confirm from the very real feelings of pain gushing through her body. She breathed heavy. She didn't like this one bit. Her stomach turned quietly. If she didn't kill herself trying to hammer her way out, she would surely die from hunger. She tried to sit up, as stupid of a idea that was considering the limited space. Her thin exo-skeleton suit was in shambles and bits were caught in her jumpsuit, nearing her skin. She winced. She slammed the escape pod one more time, crying for help. Something did hear her, although she couldn't see it. Between the bated breaths and the muttered cursing, a protocol robot caught the sound, however faint it was. These escape pods were designed poorly, evidently, because should the locking mechanism break on impact, not only because the person inside not get out, there was the very real possibility nobody would hear them due to how thick the casing around the escape pod was to absorb the shock. This protocol robot was armed with a explosive laser turret and it floated in the air. It was basically a white box with a red spherical camera eye that detected heat signatures. It aimed for her escape pod and blasted it without a second thought. Veinassa felt herself fly through the air, her eyes getting wide as she felt the escape pod turn and twist into the air and slamming into the wet ground. It was muddy, she could tell now that she on the side of the ground, able to see what were essentially the graves of her crew. The blast had bolted the hinge of the escape door enough that it was possible to swing it open, but actually doing that with her strength available at the moment wasn't. She had to try though. She kicked and punched at it, ever so slightly budging it back into the mud, the dirty water starting to seep into the escape pod. She knew she had even less time to make it now. With a couple more desperate hits and punches, the hatch finally broke off into the mud and she slammed her way out, getting deep into the mud. She gasped as she breathed in the fresh air. The exo-skeleton had started to dig into her skin, and she painfully tore it off into the mud. She glanced around. She was the only one to make it out as far as she could tell. The only other things were protocol droids scanning the escape pods, too focused on their current tasks to pay attention to her. They floated above the escape pods, like some kind of demented vision of angels. She wiped some of the blood from her lip against her mud soaked hands and picked herself up, wading through the intensely deep mudpit that the escape pods had landed in. She was very lucky to have landed on the back of her escape pod; there was likely no escape if she had. She would try to rescue the others if she knew it wasn't completely impossible at the moment; beyond just the robots there was just no way any of those were operating correctly from the height that they had dropped from. She waded through the mud, pushing forward even though her body was aching with pain. It was a horrible, searing pain, as if she had been branded with hot iron across her body. The mud was building across her ankles, but she could see land in sight. She pushed forward as much as she reasonably could and took a minute to catch her breath. She trudged forward once again. After a couple minutes, scared out of her mind that the robots would detect her heat signature, she finally reached the red sand and laid across the ground. She felt like she was in hell. After a moment she shook off her hands and feet, trying to get the mud off as much as possible. It just felt icky, and if it weren't for the jump suit being the only thing she was currently wearing aside from her underwear, she would probably take it off. She probably would take it off eventually anyway, because once the rain stopped there was no way this place wasn't going to boil. Despite it currently raining like hell, there was hardly any vegetation around. Just jagged black rock that shined slick with rain and maybe a couple of coral-like structures, zigging and zagging out of the red sand. She needed to find a village. Something where she could get her bearings straight. She pressed her hands across her bleeding cheek. She was still bleeding, and without proper medical attention she was gonna bleed out. There wasn't really anything she could bind it together with... unless you counted up the torn up suit. She wanted to press forward for a minute though; perhaps there was something that would work instead. She figured some kind of clothes would be handier in the long run, and there didn't seem to be any wildlife in this area she could skin new ones from. She staggered as the rain washed her jumpsuit and body free of mud, although she was becoming completely soaked as well. Her black hair clumped up into wet chunks across her face and back, making her feel clunky. She felt immensely filthy, but now wasn't the time to trivialize her hygiene. She was still bleeding, hard. As she staggered across the red sand, she noticed some blue grass going out of it. It was not much, but it suggested that there had to be some kind of vegetation as opposed to solely rock formations. She didn't know much about the planet aside from the water, the robots, and some of the landscape, but with those factors in mind it must at least be inhabited by some kind of early society. At least she wouldn't die of thirst. The bleeding was beginning to get worse; turns out some wounds really don't like movement and were beginning to get a bit bigger, causing her to seriously grimace and hold her left hip. She couldn't see the damage, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to. She curled up in the wet sand for a moment. The rain was still coming down, but she hadn't seen any thunder or lightning yet. Water pocketed up around her, making her feel like she was part of some messed up soup for the settlers of the planet. She closed her eyes as she felt the wound on her left hip through her jumpsuit. It wasn't as big as she was expecting, but she knew it was only going to get worse if she didn't do anything about it. She needed to keep it moist, that much she knew. The rain was taking care of that. After a while, the pain subsided enough to where it was tolerable. She needed to get moving again, because there was no telling as to when the robots would leave the crash site or where they would go. She crawled across the landscape, seeing her first instance of wild life; a strange bird with a skin that was a blue transparent color, allowing her to see the skeleton and veins that laid underneath. She admired it, but it was a chilling reminder of the death that awaited her soon should she not find anything soon. The rain was beginning to die down. She knew she did not have much time before the sun came out on the planet. Fortunately for her, she did find something she could use to wrap around her wounds; a white cactus-like plant that featured pink flowers embedded across it, with a ivory husk that could be peeled off like bark but had malleable enough properties to act as the bandages she sorely, sorely needed. She unzipped her jumpsuit and wrapped around the husky bark around her hip and around the wounds on her legs and arms. Once she was finished, she zipped back up and carried forward. This was a lot better; there was even a bit of stickiness to the husky bark that kept it secure. She could move a lot more efficiently. This could work. she thought. Just need to get somewhere where I can rest up. I can figure out how to get off if I need to later. That's not a part of the plan right now. Veinassa felt the rain go down to slow drizzle and trickle, her jumpsuit beginning to pale up from it's dark wet blacks to it's considerable softer dustier black. The heat was beginning to creep in, as she suspected. Nothing was in sight, nothing to the left or right of her vision. She was beginning to have creeping doubts about the civilization, but she needed that hope alive as long as she could or... well, she didn't know what she would do. She saw her second instance of wild life, being a gigantic snail with red eye stalks and a white body, with a shell that resembled the patterning of Mexican sugar skulls from her history lessons of Earth. The snail seemed moist and moving. Since she didn't have a direction, she simply just hopped on top. The snail seemed to try and want to get her off, but eventually gave up and moved forward. Exhausted, she took a nap, putting her head against it's craning neck. Category:Short Stories Category:Exotoro's Short Story Collection Category:Stories Category:Writings